Dachang enters the college entrance examination voluntarily to fill in the report, 700 yuan to buy a splendid future?

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June is the college entrance examination season in full swing. Recently, the results of the college entrance examination have been announced one after another, but this silent battle continues. “It is better to report well than to do well in the exam.” It seems that filling out the college entrance examination volunteer application is expected to become a new layout point for Dachang in the field of education and training, but the “cake” of the college entrance examination volunteer is not so easy to eat.

Author | Edited by Ye Danxuan | Liu Yang

Source: Leopard Change (ID: baobiannews)

Since June 23, provinces have successively announced the results of the college entrance examination and the minimum control scores for each batch of various admissions, and candidates’ voluntary reporting is also in progress. At this time, fresh candidates and their parents are choosing colleges and majors, anxiously hoping to get guidance before the next intersection of life.

According to data from the Ministry of Education, the number of applicants for the national college entrance examination in 2022 will be 11.93 million, an increase of 1.15 million over last year.

For all students, the college entrance examination is also a big test in life. With the advancement of social concepts, the saying that “one test determines life” is no longer so absolute, but for most students from ordinary families, the college entrance examination and its voluntary reporting are still very important.

This is where the voluntary reporting business came into being: from small-scale private one-on-one reporting counseling, to AI algorithm voluntary guidance recommended by large companies and platforms, there are various voluntary reporting services for college students.

Are the college students looking at the important intersection of life the “God” of the platform’s new business, or the “leek” to be cut?

Confused candidates are surrounded by “paid volunteers”

On June 9, the college entrance examination officially ended, and candidates walked out of the examination room one after another. The entrance of a test center in Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City was crowded with teachers leading the team and parents of candidates. Parents searched quickly in the crowd, waiting for their children to leave the test room.

There is also a group of people at the entrance of the test center that are clearly separated from their parents. Their eyes are usually not purposeful, and they enthusiastically hand the flyers in their hands to candidates and parents: “You can look at the college entrance examination volunteer filling service in advance. It is better to report well than to do well in the exam.”

“It is better to do well in the test than to report well” is the most common phrase used by voluntary reporting agencies. In today’s increasingly sophisticated social division of labor, volunteering has become another “life test” in addition to the college entrance examination.

Shu Shan was a student from Shandong four years ago. According to her recollection, almost every college student in her county would pay for volunteer guidance services.

In the year of the college entrance examination, Shu Shan also went to pay for consultation to fill in the voluntary report. The person who provided the consultation was a local retired teacher who once sent a large number of college students out of the county seat. The consultation service fee for voluntary reporting is between 300-500 yuan. His suggestion for voluntary reporting to Shu Shan is an ordinary normal university in the province. Shu Shan was dissatisfied with the guidance and thought that “the application was low”. After collecting information, she filled in a 211 university in Northeast China and was successfully admitted.

It is not uncommon to pay to fill in volunteer guidance services. In addition to the one-on-one voluntary reporting consultation of small workshop-style word of mouth, there are also more professional systems and platforms to provide corresponding services.

Chen Lin, a freshman from a high school in Guangdong, told “Leopard Change” that the school organized a theme lecture for volunteers to fill in the report. The speakers included the teaching director, experienced senior high school teachers, and lecturers invited from outside the school.

Chen Lin said that most of the lectures were objective and practical, but at the end of the lecture, the off-campus lecturer began to recommend a paid service for a volunteer filling and reporting guidance system. Each student gets an “experience card”, which requires a fee of 480 yuan to activate it, and the advanced VIP service is priced as high as 5,800 yuan.

Chen Lin logged on to the website on the “Experience Card” and found that the information provided by the website was not much different from the publicly available college admissions information, “Maybe if you pay (5,800 yuan), you can have exclusive information, but I don’t trust it. The qualifications of this website will not cost this kind of money.”

Chen Lin’s parents searched for volunteer applications on Baidu when they were referring to her volunteers. The search results pointed to different volunteer application guidance websites, free and paid, ranging from a 200-yuan simulated application system to tens of thousands of yuan for “one-to-one VIP”. Guidance”, and some also provide “career planning”, which is dazzling. Chen Lin’s father tried to contact the one-to-one reporting guidance agency that charged tens of thousands of yuan, but was rejected by Chen Lin.

In front of the business of volunteering for the college entrance examination, anxious candidates are like walking into a psychedelic jungle, surrounded by paid services.

Volunteer to fill in this cake is it delicious?

The gradual implementation of the new college entrance examination policy has brought greater demand to the market.

Since 2014, China has successively started the pilot reform of the college entrance examination in batches. In 2021, more provinces will begin to implement the new college entrance examination policy and merge undergraduate batches. Different from the simple volunteers of the liberal arts and sciences in the past, various places have begun to implement multi-line admission models such as “major + college” and “parallel + sequence”.

Taking Beijing as an example, the admission of high school is based on the professional group of colleges and universities, and 30 parallel volunteers are set up for undergraduate general approval; while Hebei and Liaoning are based on “professional + colleges”, and the general category can fill in up to 96 and 112 respectively. volunteer.

After the implementation of the new college entrance examination format, the reference significance of candidates’ rankings and admission scores in the past period of liberal arts and sciences has been greatly reduced, and the new admission rules have increased the complexity of the decision to apply for the examination.

The college entrance examination volunteer filling industry is becoming more and more prosperous under this background. iiMedia Research recently released an analysis report saying that in 2021, the scale of the Chinese college entrance examination voluntary filling market will reach 790 million yuan, and it is expected that the 2023 college entrance examination voluntary filling market will pay 950 million yuan.

At the same time, according to the company’s data, as of June this year, there were 2,791 volunteer-related companies in my country. Among them, the vast majority of related enterprises were established within 5 years. In 2021, there will be 788 new enterprises related to college entrance examinations, a year-on-year increase of 45.93%.

The deep binding of college entrance examination volunteers and future makes candidates and parents willing to pay for it. The huge commercial value has not only spawned relevant institutions, but also made Internet giants unable to hold back their thoughts of entering the game.

Recently, NetEase launched an app called “NetEase College Entrance Examination Wisdom”. According to the official introduction, NetEase College Entrance Examination Wisdom is NetEase’s college entrance examination planning platform, which provides high school students with services such as college entrance examination information inquiry, voluntary reporting, and career planning.

Coincidentally, several domestic platforms have launched the relevant functions of the college entrance examination voluntary reporting service, such as Baidu, Tencent, and Quark, which is backed by Ali.

Baidu, the first to enter the bureau, launched the score query and score analysis service for colleges and universities for the first time as early as 2013. However, in 2019, Baidu and 360 were interviewed by the Ministry of Education for pushing search results about college entrance examination volunteers through bidding ranking. At that time, in the feedback results of Baidu’s search for “Voluntary Filling for the College Entrance Examination”, apps, websites or consulting agencies that charge high prices for services were relatively high.

This may be the first time that Dachang has tried to get a share of the business of volunteering for the college entrance examination, but the attitude is not good-looking. In the end, Baidu issued a statement saying that “the official websites of the admissions colleges in various places have been displayed in a prominent position in the search results”, and provided exclusive logo certification for the official websites.

Now search on Baidu for “Voluntary Filling for the College Entrance Examination”, and the search page will automatically appear Baidu’s self-developed AI volunteer assistant applet, which provides services jointly with China Education Online, and there are no charging items.

Tencent Education also launched the “New Gaokaotong” applet in 2021. According to the publicity, “New Gaokaotong” is suitable for the new college entrance examination, and 29 provincial and municipal college entrance examination policies, which can meet the domestic sequential and parallel 2 filing methods, as well as 7 types of college entrance examination modes such as 7-choice 3, 6-choice 3, and 3+ comprehensive. 28 different volunteer table sizes.

In 2021, Quark also began to successfully enter the public eye through the functions embedded in the Alipay App, and successfully gained considerable popularity in the field of volunteer reporting. In addition to the regular college information, analysis and prediction of college entrance examination scores, Quark Volunteer also provides a video of the well-known education blogger Xuefeng’s application advice and live Q&A.

It is not difficult to find that Dachang’s ambitions are not limited to volunteering for the college entrance examination. Most of the paid services of the college entrance examination volunteer filling platform have the item “career planning”, that is to say, pure volunteer reference service is not its selling point, additional professional recommendation and strong employment-oriented personal career planning are the the competitiveness of such services. For example, on the Quark College Entrance Examination page, the popular topic #What majors are recruiting in big factories# is placed in a very conspicuous position.

A fact that clearly contrasts with the boom in the market is that Dachang’s admission to the college entrance examination volunteer business does not seem to have caused much splash.

A NetEase employee told “Leopard Change” that NetEase’s internal attention to the app’s launch was not high, and many employees were unaware of it.

In addition to NetEase, which took the lead in providing paid reporting services, Baidu, Quark, Tencent and other related services for college entrance examinations are more cautious, and there is even no paid entry.

Candidates and parents who are willing to pay for a bright future have created an unprecedentedly large market. The big factories, attracted by the sweet cake of college entrance examination volunteers, seem to be menacing, but they are careful when they look closely. Every family is crossing the river by feeling the stones.

Industry chaos occurs frequently, can big factories be immune?

Different from the early days of single-handedly and everywhere artificial filling and voluntary guidance, in recent years, “big data” and “AI filling and analysis” have become high-frequency words in the voluntary filling and guidance industry.

Large factories with huge amounts of data and solid technology seem to have the opportunity to reduce the dimensionality of small and medium-sized enterprises of the same type at the beginning of their entry. The huge capital pool and traffic unique to large factories can allow similar services to quickly reach the largest range. of students.

“Leopard Change” has experienced “free one-click reporting” on Quark, Baidu and other platforms. After entering candidates’ scores and selected subjects, the system will automatically generate three levels of voluntary recommendations, which are divided into “rush”, “stable”, and “guarantee” For the third grade, it is recommended to apply for the exam according to the ratio of 6:18:6. At the same time, the system will recommend the majors that the candidates can choose according to the scores entered.

Candidate Chen Lin told Leopard Change that the payment information of 480 yuan in the “Volunteer Card” system recommended by the off-campus lecturer is similar to that of the Internet platform. If it exceeds, the service will fail.

It is not difficult to see that the operational logic and data reserves of these reporting systems come from the public data given by education departments and colleges in various places. Candidates and parents can also obtain them through the official voluntary reporting reference books issued by the school. The algorithm integrates and visualizes the data.

After downloading the Netease College Entrance Examination Wisdom App, “Leopard Change” found that the platform sent 200 yuan as a gift for each new registered user, aiming to attract users to purchase its VIP voluntary reporting service. NetEase’s paid voluntary reporting service is divided into two grades: 598 yuan voluntary version service and 698 yuan planning version service.

Among them, the voluntary version of the service is more conventional enrollment information, voluntary reporting and admission probability, while the planning version of the service adds additional modules of “professional exploration” and “occupation encyclopedia” to help candidates understand social employment trends. “By the domestic career planning field Experts have compiled nearly 10,000 professional development paths to clarify employment directions.”

Voluntary systems that rely solely on computers are not necessarily reliable. On the Heimao Complaint Platform, some users said that they used “Youyi” to calculate the possibility to fill in the school, and paid 298 yuan. According to the system calculation, the user’s college entrance examination volunteers filled the first six universities with online probability. More than 70%, the results slipped all the way, and finally only guaranteed schools with 20 points lower than the college entrance examination score were admitted.

The disclaimer for the volunteer system is also much the same. On the Netease College Entrance Examination Smart Wish App, it is stated on the purchase instructions for paid services: (This App) does not engage in the college entrance examination voluntary filling service, nor does it provide the college entrance examination voluntary entrustment filling service. The simulated volunteer filling in the membership service is not the real college entrance examination voluntary filling, and there is no actual college entrance examination voluntary filling effect. The conclusions and recommendations in Member Services are for your information only.

There are also big factories, smelling the risk of chaos in the industry, and withdrawing from the business layout of college entrance examination volunteers.

“Leopard Change” found that the “New Gaokaotong” applet released by Tencent in the 2021 college entrance examination season currently shows “system update and maintenance”, and the version update time is displayed 11 months ago. In this raging college entrance examination season, it seems that Tencent cannot be found.

Today’s Toutiao, a subsidiary of ByteDance, launched a college entrance examination channel in 2020, and cooperated with colleges and universities to conduct live broadcasts related to the college entrance examination season, but it has also fallen silent in the past two years. Now, if you search for “Voluntary Filling for College Entrance Examination” on Douyin, you can only see related topics shared by users themselves. The platform has not launched topics or imported traffic.

On June 23, the Ministry of Education issued an early warning to remind candidates and parents that there are institutions or individuals in the society conducting “high-priced” voluntary reporting consultation activities to candidates and parents, and there are inaccurate policy interpretation, inaccurate information provision, and inaccurate fees. Normative and even fraud and other issues, do not believe in the so-called “high price” voluntary reporting and guidance services.

Local education departments have also begun to rectify related industries. The Hunan Provincial Department of Education stated that it will strictly crack down on the illegal conduct of “high-priced” volunteer services by social organizations in accordance with the principle of “who approves and who is responsible”.

As Wang Li, an industry insider, said, there is a huge market for voluntary reporting and guidance services. The opening page of the NetEase College Entrance Examination Wisdom App clearly reads: “For the most important decision in life.” It is precisely because this decision is so important that relevant departments have begun to rectify the industry. Paid volunteer services seem to gradually enter a gray area. If the factory enters the bureau at this time, can it still be on its own?

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